From the Quotation File

[bcholmes]

I am watching me become a creature who cries a lot, a creature who must cry a lot, for it almost seems that pity is necessary before kindness is possible. And I know I have not come this far in life to become pitiful.

-- The Bridge Across Forever

I don't think the point is: Why are we different? Why have we refused to walk one of two narrow paths, but instead demanded the right to blaze our own? The question is not why we were unwilling to conform even when being beaten to the ground by ridicule and brutality.

The real burning question is: How did we ever find the courage?

-- Leslie Feinberg, Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink and Blue

Comments

[futabachan.livejournal.com]

The real burning question is: How did we ever find the courage?

How did we ever not?

Before I actually transitioned, I thought in those terms: transition was a huge, scary ordeal that I needed to screw up my courage to get through. My courage failed me on the first try.

I don't think of it in terms of courage any more. You do it, or you die -- inside, if not outside. If you do, you get to have a happy life, or at least one as happy as the other slings and arrows will allow.